Game Details

When we got our limited review copies of SimCity, EA implored us to wait until the game went live so that we could authentically experience the full multiplayer experience and hence see everything that the game had to offer. Heeding the company’s advice, we wrote up our initial impressions but held off on a full review.

Despite those early concerns, we've now had sufficient opportunity to try the game in the live environment EA suggested, seeing how the regional and global trading markets work with a population of tens of thousands of other players. As you'll see, our thoughts on the game have changed somewhat since those early impressions, but not really enough to overcome our initial opinion on the game.

Continuing server issues

Kyle: It's kind of impossible to start this review without addressing the server concerns that are still affecting the game. Personally, I didn't run into as many problems as were reported by others. I had trouble getting the game to show up in my Origin library a couple of times, and I saw my server listed as “Full” once when I tried to log in. Otherwise, I was able to play as normal. Maybe I was just lucky with my play schedule.

That said, I was still impacted by the server issues thanks to the elimination of the Cheetah speed option, which is in its sixth day as I write this. It may sound like a minor thing, but the game is considerably less enjoyable to play without this speed option. A large part of playing the game, after you have a relatively stable city, is using Cheetah speed to move time forward quickly so you can gain more money and rapidly see if there are any developing problems about to pop up. At the next step down, Llama speed, the wait for these things is frustratingly slow, to the point where I found myself wanting to play the game less.

By EA's latest accounts, the server issues are almost completely fixed, so for the rest of the review I'd like to evaluate the game as if the servers will be working perfectly in the near future. But at this point, it still can’t be ignored.

Peter: Yo, Kyle. I'm really happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but SimCity had one of the worst launches of all time. OF ALL TIME. And we owe it to the readers, and ourselves, to really highlight just how catastrophic this launch has been.

This broken server debacle couldn't have been more predictable. This is SimCity for crying out loud. It's one of the oldest non-console gaming franchises still around, if not the oldest. This is a game I remember playing and becoming hooked on almost 23 years ago in black and white on a friend's Macintosh Classic. Over the years, I've put literally thousands of hours into SimCity games, and that's excluding all those nights I left the game running (with disasters disabled, of course) to build up cash so that I could have abundant money by the time I woke up.

Enlarge/ The server is available. But logins are closed. We don't understand how these things can even occur simultaneously.

Of course this game was going to be tremendously popular right out of the gate. Given the swiftness with which the game servers collapsed once the game went live in the US, there must have been a substantial number of pre-orders. That should have given EA a good idea of how many people were going to want to start playing it at midnight. There is no sense in which the server loads should have caught them off guard. That it appears to have done so means they either weren't paying attention, didn't do any meaningful testing of their server infrastructure before launching the game, or knew that the servers would be slagged the instant the game went live and simply didn't care.

But thanks to all the pre-ordering suckers like me, why would EA care? They've got my money. They're laughing all the way to the bank. Diablo 3 made a compelling case that it just doesn't matter, and gamers will eagerly gobble down whatever scraps the game companies feed them. I know I'm part of the problem. But what can I do about it? I wanted the extra DLC from the Digital Deluxe pack.

It's been more than a week since the game launched in the US, and I still can't reliably join servers. Even servers listed as "available" when you start the game won't necessarily let you on, instead making you stand in line for 19 minutes or occasionally an hour. When you do get on, not only is Cheetah speed (practically the only one you need) missing, but so are many of the multiplayer features like leaderboards. There's still quite some way to go before this game is working properly as intended.

And I'm still having serious core gameplay issues related to the servers. Like SimCity 4, SimCity has large regions containing a number of discrete, semi-independent buildable plots. Various resources can be traded between plots within a region, and SimCitizens can also move between plots, commuting to work or going out of town to shop, for example. I've been trying to make this work for me. I really have. But I can't, because the different plots in my region are, for want of a better word, disconnected. Occasionally the game recognizes that both plots exist and that one can supply people, power, water, and so on to the other. But most of the time it's just plain broken: one plot just doesn't correctly recognize that the other is there.

I assume this is because the server I'm on is overburdened. I would be happy to move to a different, less crowded server, except for the fact that I couldn't take my cities with me. In what EA might actually call a “feature,” you can be on up to ten regions on any one server, and get ten more if you connect to a new server. Personally, I’d rather have a game-wide limit of ten regions with the ability to move my city between servers freely, just to be able to move my region to a server that's in better health than the one I’m on. But I'm not willing to sacrifice a dozen hours that I've invested into my main city just to switch to a server that's only marginally more reliable.

The experience has definitely improved over the last week, I won’t deny that. You can feel the servers getting faster—interactions between cities are taking much less time than they were—but it still has a way to go. We don’t yet have access to the full game.

Kyle: I can definitely see why EA decided to force cities to stay in place. Being able to move a fully developed and functioning city into a new region on a new server at any point could screw up the careful balance the developers were trying to create with the region system, leaving a gaping hole in one region and creating a too-easy source of wealth in another.

173 Reader Comments

I'm afraid I really don't like the "conversation" format of this review. Lately I've clicked through to several of them, and I usually simply back out and move on after reading the intro blurb. I find traditional prose easier to follow.

I'm afraid I really don't like the "conversation" format of this review. Lately I've clicked through to several of them, and I usually simply back out and move on after reading the intro blurb. I find traditional prose easier to follow.

Agreed, if they're going to be part of the same article, I'd rather see them as one section per person rather than interspersed.

I really wanted this to be a great game. I hate to blame EA but they've messed with a lot of the franchises that I've grown up with and love. I for one will not be pre-ordering games from them off hype alone. They rarely if ever deliver.

I'm afraid I really don't like the "conversation" format of this review. Lately I've clicked through to several of them, and I usually simply back out and move on after reading the intro blurb. I find traditional prose easier to follow.

I agree. I get it -- multiplayer game therefore multiple reviewers -- but the conversation style doesn't lend itself to an effective review.

Aside from the layout issues of this 2-for-1 review,I think the main motif of the reviews of SimCity appears to be 'if you want to enjoy the game,wait until someone cracks the always-on DRM and then buy it...At least that's what I'm going to do - I'll wait on my purchase until one of the major release groups provide a workaround for the game,because it's just plain wrong(if not illegal) to purchase a product and then being denied to use it as you deem fit..

While I applaud you guys for trying something new with the conversation-style articles, I just don't like them. They take too long to get to the point, and the back and forth nature of a conversation doesn't really lend itself well to an in-depth analysis -- there's always a bit of mental thrash as you jump from one point of view to another, and it takes too long (for me, at least) to parse the article for the relevant bits.

It's an interesting idea, and kudos for trying out, but I tend to just click right back out of any conversational articles I come across.

Something similar (minus the server crashes) happened at SWTOR's lauch - unexpectedly high demand on the limited number of servers caused lenghty delays in getting into the game, if you could get in at all.

EA hurriedly threw a slew of new servers up, way too many it turned out as, after the initial excitement, players disappointed by the game left in droves, turning most of the servers into virtual ghost towns, eventually resulting in forced transfers, with all the attendant disgruntlement that entails.

Maybe EA was so tickled at winning the coveted Golden Poo award last year, it's trying for 2 in a row.

There seems to be quite a bit of negativism on the conversational approach to this article. I for one don't mind it as sometimes things come up if one bounces ideas off another. I think of it as a 'Siskel and Ebert' style commentary and it doesn't bother me much.

I cut my gaming teeth on an Apple IIe so I've been around gaming a bit. While I might have been on the fence about the latest SimCity game, alas now I'll be passing. I'm no fan of the 'always connected' DRM mandates as well as not being on board with forced multiplayer. Get off my lawn.

Years from now, business classes will teach this debacle as an example of how not to preview, review, launch a product, and support it post launch. What I'm really curious about though is if the blame hits EA, or if they end up "restructuring" Maxis as the fallout continues.

Despite the whole fiasco of the SimCity situation there were a couple of good things to come out of it.

1) Companies are once again forced to realize they cannot pull a fast one over us. 2) It revitalized my interest in city simulators/planning games

It has been a long time since a city sim has been on my list and the launch of SimCity followed by this mess made me revisit and purchase other similar games. On my list is SimCity 4 and Tropico 4. For me Tropico was a new play I picked up because of the timely Steam sale. It was a wonderful reminder how much I enjoyed these games and a welcome reminder of gameplay that isn't directly related to violence (outside of the occasional disappearance of one of my dissenters )

I would love to hear suggestions from the Ars community about other similar games and mods.

Edit: (additional commentary I forgot to include)Peter's last paragraph describes my sentiments on this game perfectly. Its exactly how I felt about this release. Unfortunately he had to go through all those painpoints in order to save me from buying the game and suffering through it myself

Also before some suggestions come out, I have been looking at Anno since its on sale. What stops me is that it doesnt look like a proper city builder, and the addition of Uplay is also worrisome. I will say the pictures make it look fantastic graphically.

Years from now, business classes will teach this debacle as an example of how not to preview, review, launch a product, and support it post launch. What I'm really curious about though is if the blame hits EA, or if they end up "restructuring" Maxis as the fallout continues.

I don't think Maxis is an independent unit or anything. They're part of EA; they are EA. Maxis is just a name now, the name of an internal EA development team.

I'm sure there will be people in the Maxis division who will quietly disappear 6 months from now. Much like Diablo 3's head honcho was... transferred to other projects (less for the launch and more for what Diablo fans consider shitty gameplay ideas).

Despite the whole fiasco of the SimCity situation there were a couple of good things to come out of it.

1) Companies are once again forced to realize they cannot pull a fast one over us. 2) It revitalized my interest in city simulators/planning games

It has been a long time since a city sim has been on my list and the launch of SimCity followed by this mess made me revisit and purchase other similar games. On my list is SimCity 4 and Tropico 4. For me Tropico was a new play I picked up because of the timely Steam sale. It was a wonderful reminder how much I enjoyed these games and a welcome reminder of gameplay that isn't directly related to violence (outside of the occasional disappearance of one of my dissenters )

I would love to hear suggestions from the Ars community about other similar games and mods.

That reminds me, I need to pick up Tropico 4 while it's on sale. I've played the previous ones a bit, and $10 is a plenty reasonable price for the deluxe pack.

Anno 2070 is on sale as well right now. I held off until the last Steam deep discount because of uPlay, and I'm happy to say it hasn't caused any problems yet, and Anno is an absolutely fantastic game. Do a little research first because it's not a SimCity-style city builder, but it really is extremely well done.

"Civitas will be a revolutionary, open ended, community driven, highly moddable city building game, where you are not only responsible for terraforming the land, zoning, and building the structures, but you will also be able to manage many other aspects of your civilization."

"Civitas can either be played as a single player game, or you can play online with other city builders to make entire regions, share resources, and compete for citizens to build the largest city."

Was not included in the "Ugly" list at the end of the review. The outright lying about this level of simulation is atrocious, and people who just skim the review and read the summary list at the end are going to completely miss out on that.

I'm afraid I really don't like the "conversation" format of this review. Lately I've clicked through to several of them, and I usually simply back out and move on after reading the intro blurb. I find traditional prose easier to follow.

Eh. I liked it. It was a nice change-up from a traditionally done review.

After following the two though throughout the week though, I found the review to be a bit...anti-climatic.

There seems to be quite a bit of negativism on the conversational approach to this article. I for one don't mind it as sometimes things come up if one bounces ideas off another. I think of it as a 'Siskel and Ebert' style commentary and it doesn't bother me much.

Despite the whole fiasco of the SimCity situation there were a couple of good things to come out of it.

1) Companies are once again forced to realize they cannot pull a fast one over us.

Hahaa. No, I think that it's more 'companies are once again shown that any number of past transgressions will be forgiven in exchange for a token pre-order bonus'. It's astonishing how many times certain companies (EA and Ubisoft in particular come to mind) are able to mistreat their customers and still get repeat business, even when (as in the case of SimCity) it was obvious before the game even came out that it wasn't going to live up to expectations.

If you don't want to be repeatedly ripped off and disappointed, just follow these two common-sense guidelines:

1) Don't pre-order digital goods! Especially not from an enormous entity like EA - they don't need your support in advance; an unknown indie shop may be a different story.

2) Don't buy a game that only exists in your head! By which I mean, don't buy a game like SimCity hoping that it will be the amazing SimCity game you've been dreaming of for years when all of the evidence shows that it's actually distinctly subpar. If you're making a purchase thinking "well, it might be good" then you are letting yourself get scammed.

Instead of being individuals with defined jobs and homes, the Sims are just dumb automata.

It seems to me that EA or Maxis or both took the SimCity concept and tried to Sims-ify it, more or less. As with the Sims, the beauty is only skin deep (I don't care for the games and have never owned a Sims game.) Rather than create a detailed simulation, it looks like the game was made for a different audience than previous SimCity games. It's a real shame, but judging by the number of years the SimCity franchise has been around, Maxis ought to have one hell of a detailed city simulation on its hands by now. Sometimes reinventing the wheel just doesn't work and is simply bad advice. I owned and enjoyed the previous games (aside from the "social" release disaster.) I won't bother with this one. Thanks for the heads up.

Years from now, business classes will teach this debacle as an example of how not to preview, review, launch a product, and support it post launch. What I'm really curious about though is if the blame hits EA, or if they end up "restructuring" Maxis as the fallout continues.

I'm not so sure.

If they fix the server issues, re-enable cheetah speed, and patch the pathfinding to acceptable levels (all of which seems relatively likely), SimCity will probably do just fine, and then they can go about making more money off the DLC.

Which, by the way, was clearly the whole point. Get a relatively-functioning product out there, and then sell DLC. In the forum thread someone pointed out that if you'd bought all the DLC for The Sims, you would have spent almost $500. That's a lot more than even 3 or 4 "expansions" for SimCity, priced even at $40-$60 a pop.

If this all comes to pass, EA will have managed to get paying customers to conduct both an alpha and a beta test (the real "beta" test having been nothing more than a buzz-producing exercise just prior to launch) and start a DLC-supported franchise that will mint them money for years.

Despite the whole fiasco of the SimCity situation there were a couple of good things to come out of it.

1) Companies are once again forced to realize they cannot pull a fast one over us. 2) It revitalized my interest in city simulators/planning games

It has been a long time since a city sim has been on my list and the launch of SimCity followed by this mess made me revisit and purchase other similar games. On my list is SimCity 4 and Tropico 4. For me Tropico was a new play I picked up because of the timely Steam sale. It was a wonderful reminder how much I enjoyed these games and a welcome reminder of gameplay that isn't directly related to violence (outside of the occasional disappearance of one of my dissenters )

I would love to hear suggestions from the Ars community about other similar games and mods.

If you're talking about city simulators, then I quite like the Caesar series from Impressions, or better yet Pharaoh/Queen of the Nile. Very old (so might be difficult to get hold of), 2D isometric city planners set in ancient Rome or Egypt respectively.

Slightly more modern incarnations are Children of the Nile and Caesar 4. CotN is proper 3D (although the engine is hardly state of the art), with each citizen being separately modelled. Caesar 4 is similar I think, although I havn't played it.

For non violent gameplay, its a bit offtopic but I can thoroughly recommend Kerbal Space Program. You have a solar system, a fledgling space port and a large selection of spaceship parts. The rest is up to you! In alpha at the moment, so no structured missions but a very very playable sandbox. Quite a steep learning curve but lots of tutorials and stuff online and there are various mods available that can make various aspects of the game a lot easier if you so choose.

I think the format of this review is interesting. It reminds me of how I converse with my friends about our games. It makes for interesting conversation. A normal review probably isn't warranted here since there have been a ton of articles all over the internet covering different aspects of the game already.

The only annoying thing is for those of us restricted to old versions of IE due to work computer restrictions, the text overlaps the pictures making bits hard to read without highlighting it.

I do hope to see this as an occasionally used option, not a replacement, of game reviews going forward.

Seems like the perfect example why the free market doesn't work: people are just too stupid for it.

'Voting with your wallet' is just not happening. Nobody should buy games from EA. Ever. But customers are like abused spouses, they will come back every time, will believe every lie. They will make up apologies for failures of the companies and endure pain, anger and disappointment for some vague glimpses of pleasure.

You people throwing money at EA disgust me! You are the death of the video game industry!!!

...

@EA: Please, just provide an update that let's my city expand and I will forgive you everything.

I think the idea that Great Works having a dedicated space on the region map as an innovation is missing the forest for the trees. It seems pretty clear to me that the 'region' is the largest area that we would have been available as a city size if they hadn't had to scale it back either due to the always on-line or the performance of the simulation. They gave Great Works it's own space because they wouldn't be able to fit anything that size in our limited build space. I'd much rather have a huge space and plop a huge campus off in one corner.

Kyle: The regional system also seems to have odd effects on the self-sufficiency of a city. In one of my cities, I was faced with a large employment problem late in the game, with tons of unfilled jobs and no lots to put new residential housing to fill them. Yet despite this, I got exactly zero people commuting in from other towns to fill some of those jobs, seemingly because nearby players didn't have any unemployed people who were free to commute in. That's all somewhat understandable, and it could have been fixed by converting some of my industrial base to even more residential areas. Except the game was also telling me there was an extreme demand for more industrial space. The conflicting advice made little to no sense.Speaking of advice, the extremely janky alert system is a major hassle. I can't count the number of times my toolbar would light up with a yellow warning that my sewage treatment plant had clogged pipes, only to see the warning disappear a second later with no input from me. Well, is it a problem or isn't it? Citizens complain about crime even when my police tracker reads "zero crimes per day," which makes little sense (also, there were somehow dozens of criminals listed as committing those zero crimes per day. So... how are they criminals again?) The game would warn me frequently about hazmat fires even when I had a hazmat truck that efficiently took care of them automatically. Was that warning really necessary?On the flipside, I would occasionally be dumbstruck by problems that the game didn't see fit to warn me about, like buildings that weren't getting enough water or businesses going abandoned because they lacked places to ship freight. And even when I did fix problems, the warnings would often take a good long while to realize they were actually fixed, leading to an odd temporal disconnect that took some getting used to. In a game that's primarily about discovering and responding to problems, these interface issues are extremely unwelcome.

It's been shown that a city can be zoned completely residential, and still be profitable - even up to populations of 200k and in the non-sandbox mode. I wonder if you could have one city in a region like this to act as a seed city for workers in another region. I'd imagine the other cities would have to have at least some residential zoning, and obviously there'd have to be a good amount of mass transit options. I'll have to try it out on an almost-full region, if I can find one through the terrible server browser.

I was busy so I couldnt buy Mass Effect 3, but I learned from other's mistakes to wait a few weeks after the game came out to see if it was worth it. Diablo III reinforced the waiting strategy, and This SimCity hit me with a 4x4 of reinforcement, DON'T PRE BUY in digital age there are no benefits and many things can go wrong.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.